Anti Virus Tips

There are many facets of computing security that one needs to be aware of to provide a safe online experience. One of the most misunderstood is anti-virus software and keeping it up to date. Often when I have customers that acquire a virus I am asked, how could this be, I have the anti virus software that was on my system when I bought it? You need to be aware that along with the AV software comes a timed subscription to updates that if you don’t renew or upgrade, expire and leave you open to any new virus’s that born. You see, as virus’s are created and start to spread, the AV companies are busy finding them and writing detection routines to prevent them from infecting your system. Without these updates, new virus’s can and do infect systems that you may think are protected. So it is important to pay attention to the expiration notices that appear warning you to renew your AV subscription. Another important and often asked question is how do I know if these notices I receive are for real or just a ploy to get me to buy something? This is actually a good question and one that is not easily answered. You see, there are many companies out there that produce pop ups or windows that make them look like legitimate requests to either upgrade software or messages that your system is infected and you MUST take immediate action. The safest thing to do is to always click on (X) in the upper right hand corner of the window to close it and never click on anything inside of the window as it might be one of these phony offers. First of all, Windows is not going to tell you that it is infected with a virus, so if it looks like Windows is providing the information it is most likely bogus. Best thing to do is close the window and run a complete virus scan of the system, one that you initiate. You can launch your AV software and check to make sure your virus definitions file is up to date and your subscription is valid. So if in doubt, you initiate the scans and you initiate the program to see status, that is the only sure fire way to tell if you are protected, don’t reply on unsolicited pop up messages. It’s always good practice to periodically launch your AV software and check to ensure it’s fully active and up-to-date, most have an easy to read status screen that give a good summary of your AV protection.

There are many free anti-virus options to protect your system, so having to pay for subscriptions is not necessary. There are many out there, my favorite has been AVG, they have been around for years and are highly rated. A newer free offering is from Panda, another highly rated company. The twist with Panda is they are using some new technology that loads a small client on your machine and offloads a lot of the detected to their systems in the “cloud”. As cloud computing continues to the be hot topic, this seems like a great alternative, especially if your computer is always connected to the internet (cloud). Panda’s offering can be downloaded from http://www.cloudantivirus.com and the AVG free offering can get downloaded from http://free.avg.com. Until next time........